Cathy's Art Diary

Exquisite small exhibition at the British Museum putting their new acquisition of a drawing by Rembrandt of a sleeping child in context. The show looked at pictures of children in Dutch and Flemish 6th and 17th centuries works in the context of art and social history. They ran chronologically placing Rembrandt in the centre of the timeline. I loved the early drawings by Henrick Goltzius as well as his engraving of Frederick de Vries who was his apprentice while the boys artist father was in Venice. It was done to send to his father to Sue him there but was well! There was a good selection of Rembrandt drawings from the collection featuring children and the commentary talked about how he often saved drawings of everyday life to reuse the images in religious works. The focal drawing, shown here, was so delicate. Finally the show looked at followers of Rembrandt and a new find for me were some beautiful, coloured interiors by Adriaen Van Ostade. Closed 6 October 2024   ...

Fascinating exhibition at the British Museum of new contemporary acquisitions celebrating a grant from the Rootstein Hopkins Foundation which has enabled them to buy over 300 works. The show had some beautiful pieces but also acted as an overview of art since the 1960s. I was impressed at how many of the artists I knew but I was also introduced to some great new finds. The show was gently themed bringing together works influenced by art history, pictures of people, still-lives, landscape and abstract work. Needless to say it was the art history section which I loved most. As ever in the print room galleries the labels were comprehensive but simply written. Highlights included the first in the show by Cornelia Parker of wine glasses, Jake Garfield’s take on Zoffany’s Tribuna of the Uffizi and Charlotte Verity’s watercolour monotypes based on plants in her garden in lockdown. My favourite was this exquisite Japanese ink work by Joy Gerard based on a photograph of a demonstration...

Amazing exhibition at the National Gallery looking at Van Gogh’s two years in Provence. It was so good I almost don’t know what to write about it! The individual works blew me away so it was hard to follow the narrative. I’d done an online talk on the show earlier on the week so thankfully I didn’t have to! It was arranged in gentle themes emphasising how Van Gogh used the same subject to express different moods and how he repeated images but never copied them. The core of the show focused on the Yellow House and how Van Gogh saw it as a way to display his art. It was magical to have a room of pictures that had been shown there and don’t get me started on the fact they had two Sunflower paintings hung with “The Lullaby” as a triptych suggested in a letter to his brother. It was a great idea to have minimal labels and a booklet with more information to carry round. Make sure you pick it up on the way in. It’s also fascinating to read where the pictures come from. You’ll never s...

Clever and beautiful small exhibition at the National Gallery looking at how David Hockney has been inspired by Piero Della Francesca. It brought together Francesca’s “Baptism of Christ” with two paintings by Hockney from 1977 in which it features, “Looking at Pictures on a Screen” and “My Parents” and hung them like a triptych. It did make you look more closely at all three. They were shown with archive material from the gallery around Hockney’s 1981 exhibition there in which “Looking at Pictures on a Screen” featured and including a letter from him to the gallery requesting private access to Van Gogh’s “ Sunflowers” and permission to photograph art works. I loved the reply from the then director denying the later due to how disruptive it might be. Oh dear I’d just taken at least one picture of each of the works in the show! This also made me think that the title of that “Looking at Pictures on a Screen” means something quite different now! Closed 27 October 2024 Reviews Ti...

Charming exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum showcasing the ceramics collection of Henry Willett. Usually to be seen at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery the collection aims to tell a popular history of the British Isles through the pottery found “on the mantlepieces of many cottage homes”. I have seen the collection in Brighton, donated in 1903,   but not really looked at it in any detail. Here it was shown with pieces Willett had given to the Victoria and Albert Museum and shown under the 23 categories he had defined. I do love ceramics and was intrigued to see such a wonderful cross section of popular subjects from crime, through celebrity to religion. Highlights included this portrait of Princess Charlotte, a jug commemorating the guillotine and of course a Sussex connection in a jug advertising a builder in Lewes. Closed 25 September 2024  

Excellent exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum highlighting Sir Elton John and David Furnish’s photographic collection. I’d seen highlights of the collection before at Tate Modern but it was good to see a more comprehensive show. It was gently themed starting with fashion, moving through celebrity, the male form, documentary photography and ending with abstract pieces. It did feel like the more popular work came first but that might just be my taste. The pictures and rooms were well described and I found lots of stories to follow up. The emphasis was very much on the works not the collectors. I was quite pleased with how many photographers I recognised from other shows. I think my favourite picture was this one by Hiro (Yasuhiro Wakabayashi) of Shinjuku Station in Tokyo and I was surprised to find it had been taken in 1963 as it felt very contemporary. Closes 5 January 2025 Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard